The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Helleborus plant, botanically known as Helleborus×hybridus and hereinafter referred to by the name ‘EPB 31’.
The new Helleborus plant is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventors in Devon, United Kingdom. The objective of the breeding program was to create new freely-flowering Helleborus plants with strong peduncles that hold numerous attractive flowers above the foliar plane.
The new Helleborus plant originated from a cross-pollination conducted by the Inventors in Devon, United Kingdom on Feb. 27, 2008 of a proprietary seedling selection of Helleborus×hybridus identified as code designation 630-EP, as the female, or seed, parent, not patented, with a proprietary seedling selection of Helleborus×hybridus identified as code designation 46055-XT, as the male, or pollen, parent, not patented. The new Helleborus plant was discovered and selected by the Inventors as a single flowering plant from within the progeny of the stated cross-pollination grown in a controlled greenhouse environment in Devon, United Kingdom on Mar. 16, 2010.
Asexual reproduction of the new Helleborus plant by tissue culture in a controlled greenhouse environment in Roelofarendsveen, The Netherlands since Apr. 10, 2013, has shown that the unique features of this new Helleborus plant are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.